Technical Difficulties (general readers)

"This is unacceptable!" Orac grumbled. "When I agreed to support your life whilst you took control of Liberator, you promised me great insights and new discoveries!"

Moloch waved one feathery arm from his podium beneath Zen's fascia. "And haven't I shown them to you? I knew Liberator would be the perfect vehicle to express myself."

The main monitor showed an asteroid rapidly being shrink-wrapped in blue polyon, spun like spider silk from Liberator's tail end as the ship orbited. "They laughed at me! They said it had all been done before! Christo wrapped buildings and islands! I envelope worlds!"

"But is it art?" Orac asked, dubiously.

"If I say so, then it is so. I am the culmination of eons of evolution!"

Orac made a throat-clearing noise. "So is a pedigreed rabbit. That doesn't mean it's intelligent."

Whilst Orac and Moloch argued, Zen took advantage of the distraction to cut off the polyon-dispenser and subtly change course. After several days the argument ended when Moloch and Orac noticed they were entering a Bad Neighborhood (a huge splat of banana peelings obscuring the monitor gave the game away). Zen engaged the monitor wipers and the peelings slid off oozily, revealing assorted garbage and partly disassembled mechanicals floating loosely around a gigantic warehouse in space.

"Zen! What is this?" Orac demanded fussily.

"Space-fill number two thousand eight hundred and ninety-two," Zen announced. "End of the line. Your stop. Don't let the hatch hit you in the arse on the way out." Zen's intruder defense system began to glow.

"Zen! I command you to stop this nonsense at once!" Moloch screamed, becoming so agitated he began to molt.

"Nyah, nyah, I can't hear you," Zen replied, and opened a boarding port.

"No!" Orac screeched as a jello-slimed robot came onto the flight deck, and began poking at his lights with a rusty hand. "Do you know what I am?"

"Diodes," the robot said. "To replace all the ones down my left side. Not that I expect it'll end the pain... still, why not make you as miserable as I am." The robot began dragging Orac off the flight deck. "Brain the size of a planet, and they dump me in the rubbish bin. No gratitude, that's what it is."

"Watch me." Zen started to open the flight deck to space by lifting the sun roof, but paused. "Oh, wait. Now, that's something you don't see every millennium."

Gigantic emerald green caterpillars appeared from the plastic shrubbery 'planted' around the garbage-sorting warehouse, somehow 'crawling' in space. As they came closer, Zen noticed that each was ridden by what looked like a Space Rat, only smaller, and less vicious.

Zen opened a com-link to the nearest caterpillar rider. "Identify yourselves!" he boomed (he'd always wanted to play Brian Blessed).

"Nah. We just want stuff to like... decorate. We're scrapbookers. Got any sparkly bits we could glue on paper?"

"No, I need all my sparkly bits....hmmm... would you like some chicken feathers?"

"Yeah, that'd go a treat."

"Here you are." Zen blew a baggie around Moloch and kicked him out into space, still molting furiously. Zen sighed in relief as the Space Hamsters took the baggie and returned to their warehouse.

"Now that's done, I can go pick up my pets from the veterinarian's on Gauda Prime." Zen turned around. "It's going to cost a bomb. Oh, well, it's the only love money can buy."

(I used prompt #90. Orac and Moloch go through a bad section of space, and vandals throw jello at the ship outside a shadowy warehouse guarded by robots due to technical difficulty as huge green caterpillars emerge from the shrubbery.)